morning thoughts on form, and The Form (art and T’ai chi) and the WSEA Water taxi!

This misty grey morning, as I peer out at Elliott Bay and think about the voyage ahead–down the hill in the rain, onto the water taxi and across the bay, up through Pioneer Square to Chinatown where I’ll do T’ai chi at the Seattle Kung Fu Club studio, I feel energized and serene. Reading Peter Ralston lately has been inspiring, and to practice T’ai chi and make quilts at the same time seems somehow philosophically coherent.

As Ralston writes in Principles of Effortless Power, “Only the ‘form’ survives of anything created and then passed on in time, since creativity resides within what is formless and this formlessness cannot survive, having never existed. Therefore, only when the form is being consciously created in this moment is it truly useful and representative of its origin” (xx).

The form, message, and feel of a quilt become visible over time, as seen in the photos below, dated 11/20/21 and 11/26/21. Once created, it is. You can feel it with your hands and face, snuggle under its warmth, enjoy its bright colors and patterns. It may fade if left in the sun, or be stained by some accident, yet a quilt will usually survive a pretty long time.

The Form we practice in T’ai chi comes to life in time as well. Yet once created, it is gone, until next time.

So far, I’ve learned about 20 minutes of the Wu Form. When I practice, I feel like I’m inhabiting a timeless realm where themes and refrains repeat through space, spiraling and stepping to some unknown beat. Can’t wait for class!

P.S. These photos of the water taxi and Chinatown are from July 2018, when we had just moved here. They do not represent the world as it looks today, on 11/27/2021. the fog hangs heavy over the water this morning… making the world just a little more quiet.

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day 17: early morning reminder from Marcus Aurelius

Yesterday was an amazing day–sewing non-stop! The orders for face masks have been pouring in and now I have more than enough work to keep me busy for weeks. I only hope my neighbors will remain patient–six to ten in a day is all I can make, especially since they are made entirely from scratch (no more elastic or bias tape here). I’ve always said “I love sewing”: now will be the true test. Yet what better way to spend my time? So I return to Marcus Aurelius for another jolt of wisdom about work:

“In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant.

Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their separate parts of the universe?”

— Meditations, Book V, 1.

 

day seven: on time and its vicissitudes

Yesterday I got the best present for these cloistered times: a huge English dictionary (in two volumes!) and a book on psychology by William James. These generous gifts from a new friend (thanks, Emma!) have already improved my life and arguably improved our dinner-table conversation. According to me, anyway. Our resident Millennial rolled his eyes about my newfound enthusiasm for etymologies, saying “OK Boomer.”  Go figure. 

Those gifts have inspired today’s thoughts on time and its vicissitudes. But first, let’s all remember that our lives had vicissitudes well before this crisis! Perhaps it’s the lack of vicissitudes that’s making us miserable? More on that below… let’s recall what the word means:

*Vicissitude (Etymology: Latin vicissitudo, from vicissim, “by turns” + preposition -tude [forming an abstract noun, as altitude, exactitude, solitude]

1. Reciprocation, return, an alternation, a regular change (Rare)
2. The fact or liability of change occurring in a specified thing or area; an instance of this.
3. Change or mutability regarded as a natural process or tendency in human affairs.
4. In pl. Changes in circumstances; uncertainties or variations of fortune or outcome.

Aha! It is the lack of apparent change, the sameness, of life under coronavirus that makes the time feel so long. Let’s play a mind game to test that: try to grab the now.  You’ll find you have to continually say, “Ok now!” “No, now!” “Now!” “NOW NOW NOW NOW!” because as soon as you speak the word, it is already no longer it.  But that does not make it any more interesting.

The great lecturer and pioneer in psychology, William James (1842-1910) articulates that paradox nicely:

“Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.”

“Reflection leads us to the conclusion that it must exist, but that it does exist can never be a fact of our immediate experience. The only fact of our immediate experience is what has been well called ‘the specious’ present, a sort of saddle-back of time with a certain length of its own, on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time.  … with a bow and a stern, as it were—a rearward- and a forward-looking end.”**

Then why is the present is so boring?  Back to vicissitudes.  As James writes,

“A day full of excitement, with no pause, is said to pass ‘ere we know it.’ On the contrary, a day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small eternity. Tœdium, ennui, Langweile, boredom, are words for which, probably, every language known to man has its equivalent. It comes about whenever, from the relative emptiness of content of a tract of time, we grow attentive to the passage of time itself. Expecting, and being ready for, a new impression to succeed; when it fails to come, we get an empty time instead of it, and such experiences, ceaselessly renewed, make us most formidably aware of the extent of mere time itself.”

He suggests another experiment:  “Close your eyes and simply wait to hear somebody tell you that a minute has elapsed, and the full length of your leisure with it seems incredible.  … The odiousness of the whole experience comes from its insipidity; for stimulation is the indispensable requisite for pleasure in an experience, and the feeling of bare time is the least stimulating experience we can have. The sensation of tedium is a protest, says Volkmann, against the entire present.”

If tedium is a protest against the lack of stimulation inherent in our current “Lockdown,” “Stay at Home” or “Shelter-in-Place” lifestyles, what can we do?  Aha, the dictionary again comes to the rescue!  Sometimes understanding a word can lead to an action to activate it or prevent it. To avoid the enemy–insipidity–we must know what it looks and feels like.

Insipid*** (Etymology:  comes from the French insipide or late Latin insipidus, formed as IN– [prefixed to adjectives to express negation or privation]+ sapidus, [savory, delicious, prudent, or wise])

1. Adjective. 1. Tasteless, having only a slight taste, lacking flavor.
2. Lacking liveliness; dull, uninteresting.
3. Devoid of intelligence or judgment; stupid; foolish.
4. Noun. An insipid person or thing; a person who is deficient in sense, spirit, etc.

The answer to insipidity–that is, boredom– is to find things that are opposite to all of the words above. We turn to the word Interest.

Interest**** (Etymology: from Latin interest, it makes a difference, it concerns, it matters]

Many meanings follow, but for us it is nos. 8 & 9 that matter

8. A state of feeling in which one wishes to pay particular attention to a thing or person; (a feeling of) curiosity or concern.
9. The quality or power of arousing such a feeling: the quality of being interesting.

CONCLUSION!  To change the dull into the savory, without moving beyond our homes or speaking with strangers, we must change our perspectives.  We must find something that arouses the feeling of curiosity. Take one thing about your life and change it.  For me, I went outside and took a new photo of our window with the sign, from a slightly different angle. The new photo hides the damage on the window frame and ushers in the view of lovely young buds poking out of a tree branch. Now this photo journal will also track the progress of spring!

I’m also creating a new quilt design, by channeling memories of travel and experimentation in a stream-of-consciousness for a young woman far away. These squares show how I’ve deconstructed Alice in Wonderland by stitching some key moments from the book (where Alice puts the key in the door, meets the hookah-smoking caterpillar and follows the anxious rabbit) into a patchwork that includes scraps of one of her old dresses, surrounded by scenes of Paris and a cityscape by night, trees, French words, and a crane for long life and good luck.

Wishing you an interest-ing day!  And see ya in the a.m.!

 

P.S. Interesting. (Etymology interest + suffix ing [forming nouns from verbs, by analogy denoting a) verbal action [i.e. fighting, swearing, blackberrying, or an instance of it, as wedding], or an occupation or skill [i.e. banking, fencing, glassblowing]. Our goal is to create a skill out of being curious with the banal….

 

*The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5^th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), vol. 2, p. 3532.

** William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course, ed. Gordon Allport (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), pp. 147-152.

***The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 1, p. 1387.

**** Op.cit., vol. 1, p. 1400.

 

quiet, happy anticipation… as a new group of people comes to life

Hello!

This morning is a time of quiet, happy anticipation over what lies ahead: the first meeting of a new group of kids who will form the “Write YOUR Story” team for Spring 2019! I only know two of the nine children enrolled, and as all teachers know, this moment before the names on the list take on the faces, voices and personalities of real people, is a thrilling time. You wonder who will be the silly, and who has a more serious turn of spirit, who will be a force of calm, which one will chat nonstop, and which one will remind you of still waters running deep. Of course, the same child can incarnate all those qualities, if you know them and see them long enough: we are all changeable creatures.

But the news was so awful today as most days; I almost felt numbed into sadness after reading the daily papers and weekly magazines we get here…  Until something reminded me of my role, which is to inspire people, and pushed me to seek out a finer sort of sustenance.  And so I returned to Mai-Mai Sze’s Tao of Painting  for a refresher.

 

What Mai-Mai Sze reminded me is that the little group of writers will create a spirit, an esprit de corps, that is unlike any other. It will come from each of us and form a collective feeling. How that happens is a mystery to me. But I find it endlessly fascinating anyway and I know no-one like Mai-Mai Sze to guide such reflection. Here, then, are some of her key thoughts on the Ch’i:

“Ch’i is an elusive term, one whose meaning can be sensed without difficulty but which no simple definition can cover. … it has to be grasped through intuition.

Its significance is perhaps best suggested by its literal meaning of ‘breath,’ if one remembers the ancient concept of breath as soul and spirit.The Sanskrit prana, the Greek pneuma, and the Latin spiritus have the same import as ch’i, likewise ruah in Biblical Hebrew and the term nefesh, described by Zohar as the breath and substance of the Fourth Sphere, the world of physical existence.  […]

The character ch’i is composed of ch’i (vapor) and mi (rice or grain). It is supposed to have meant originally the spirits distilled from rice or the vapor rising from the fermentation of rice or other grain. Ch’i (vapor) also stands for ‘clouds,’ and its old forms closely resemble bands or ribbons of clouds.  […] the original form of the character was made up of three wavy strokes, indicating clouds or vapors. The three strokes, the shortest at the top, the longest at the bottom, suggest the form of an ascending spiral, the sign of circulation upward and One-ward.  […]

Ch’i is manifest in men and things as breath and soul and spirit. In painting, Ch’i is both the creative resources of the painter and the essential vitality–spiritual, divine, and creative–that can be transmitted to a painting and perceived by the spectator. […]

That the meaning and importance of the concept did not essentially change may be seen in a passage from the XVIIIth-century painter Chang Kêng: ‘Ch’i yün may be expressed by ink, by brushwork, by an idea, or by absence of idea … It is something beyond the feeling of the brush and the effect of ink, because it is the moving power of Heaven, which is suddenly disclosed. But only those who are quiet can understand it.'”

–Mai-Mai Sze, The Tao of Painting pp. 52-55.

As you go about your day, stop for a second and witness life happening. In the short-term, you might consider the fact that you are still breathing, though you may have forgotten to do so. Secondly, look up! The winds are still creating swirling patterns of cloud and light, though you may rarely gaze upon them. Those are short-term examples of life going on. But what are you doing that is so important right now? Why not take a minute to consider the long-term implications of your time on this planet, too…

My work (self-imposed; I do it for fun!) is to meet with a group of young children and begin a new semester of “Write YOUR Story.” That is, my job is to inspire kids with patience and camaraderie (and a bit of toughness, to take criticism in stride) in order that we will be able to write a book together as a group. Then we’ll illustrate it, and finally, when all that is done, each child will write his or her own story. Their boundless energy and excitement may make it hard for them to sit still and listen, at first. Their nerves may make it hard for them to read aloud in smooth rhythms; they may stumble over the words, at first.

But I guarantee that sometime in the next fourteen weeks, an amazing thing will happen and only those who are present will witness it. (But you can make it happen too, wherever you are!)  Even the youngest children witness it, every semester. It is creativity: the ch’i in its purest essence, bounding to life again… and once it is expressed, our lives will be changed forever more. We will feel and remember that joy; it will give us wings!